Last year, at thousands of events, American runners raised more than $650 million to fight cancer. Why does the Big C unite the running world like no other cause? And how much good have we done?

ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS UNTIL the Portland Marathon, which means my Team in Training group will meet for just two more workouts. Two more weeks of high-fives and Go Teams! Two more weeks of sharing stories and sharing pain--as we'll do once again on this mid-September Saturday, in a vintage Oregon drizzle.

Our group of 20 or so runners gathers at dawn under the Burnside Bridge on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland. Steam rises over takeout cups of Stumptown coffee, rain drips off ball caps, and we shiver in our thin poly T-shirts. Within the realm of TNT, however, where the pain of marathon training symbolically reflects the suffering of cancer, adversity is often welcomed. The dismal weather only seems to brighten our mood.

The unfailingly upbeat Kevin Tangen, who as team captain arranges logistics for our weekly long runs, cheerfully stacks water jugs and other aid-station supplies in the bed of his pickup. Julie Hoffman, who along with her coaching partner Karl Johnson has directed our training for the past four months, distributes slips of paper containing the morning's course directions. One of my teammates, Tam Driscoll, passes out flyers for an upcoming benefit at a local brewpub. For three straight years, Tam has been one of the top TNT producers in the nation, raising more than $130,000 for research into a cure for blood cancers.

"Prevale Ale will flow!" Tam vows, pressing a flyer into my palm. A special batch India pale ale that is prepared expressly for TNT, with proceeds going to the group's parent organization, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Prevale Ale is brewed in honor of Tam's late sister Nancy, who died of lymphoma in 2009.

After folding the flyer into my backpack and, at Coach Julie's suggestion, pausing to stretch my Achilles (this will be my first marathon in years, and my first as part of an organized training group), I say good morning to two teammates, Annie Sprague and Dawn Viar. "Dawn has some great news!" says Annie, a 30-year-old graduate student and mother.

A tall, long-legged, first-time marathoner at age 31, Dawn has met every training challenge--a nagging hip injury, a hill-climbing workout on a 90-degree August evening--with admirable sangfroid. Last spring, just before joining the group, she completed treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma. "My blood work came back on Tuesday," Dawn says. "It's official. I'm cancer-free."

It is little surprise that she talks openly about her condition. Like many TNT groups, our team includes several runners who've dealt personally with cancer, either by engaging the disease themselves or watching someone close to them suffer. Each Saturday, before setting out on our long group run, Dawn apprises us of her progress. Our team talks cancer all the time.

At a little before 7 a.m., with the rain intensifying and the din of traffic thickening on the nearby I-5 freeway, Julie calls us together. She reviews this morning's route: along the East Bank Esplanade to the Steel Bridge, over the bridge to the downtown Portland waterfront, then a climb up to Forest Park and return--a relatively easy 12 miles after last week's 20-mile run, which culminated four months of progressively difficult training.

"Your hay is in the barn," Julie says. "Now you can start enjoying your taper."

After a spate of high-fives, we mosh into our ritual huddle. In 2010, TNT, which bills itself as the world's largest endurance-sports trainer, guided some 45,000 people through marathons, triathlons, and other events. Nationwide, the organization's marathon coaches follow the training philosophies of such prominent exercise physiologists as Jack Daniels, but add their own wrinkles. Some coaches promote the run/walk system; others, such as Julie and Karl, teach straight running. The coaches' motivational styles--the way they talk about cancer--also vary. Karl, a wisecracking Army veteran, is knowledgeable about cancer but rarely brings up the subject. Julie, a special-ed teacher who started with TNT nine years ago after her closest friend died of leukemia, tends to be more direct and emotional.

Amid the press of wet, adrenaline-stoked bodies, she quietly reminds us why we run. She urges us to remember, during today's hard miles, that our suffering pales compared with that of a blood-cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy. These pep talks always make me feel a little uneasy. Compared with many of my teammates, my cancer pedigree is modest. My aged mother has survived colon cancer, my older brother is surviving prostate cancer, and my wife's mother died from kidney cancer in her 80s. While several of my friends have died young from cancer, they were not among my inner circle.

Rather than embarking on a personal mission, I've embedded with TNT for professional reasons. According to the American Cancer Society, 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States this year, and some 569,000 people will die from the disease, an average of 1,500 deaths each day. Over a lifetime, cancer will afflict one of two men in the developed world, and one of three women. I'm here to study how this common killer interacts with its most accessible sport, and TNT has provided the platform for a 16-week seminar in the subject.

Over the course of the campaign, I've learned that the money raised by running-reliant nonprofit cancer groups, while small compared to the $6 billion per year in federal funding (TNT, for example, raises around $100 million annually for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society), delivers maximum bang for the buck; on a national level, the running community plays a key, and expanding, role in the war against the disease. On an individual level, I've learned that cancer sows physical, emotional, and spiritual chaos, and patients and survivors instinctively turn to distance running in order to regain control. People who've lost loved ones to the disease, meanwhile, embrace running as a healthy outlet for their grief, and fund-raising as a constructive way to channel their anger. From the perspective of the running community, I've learned that, rather than creating a generation of "one-and-done" marathon dilettantes, as is charged by some old-guard critics, cancer-charity training programs have given thousands of beginners a solid grounding for a lifetime in the sport.

In short, I now know that cancer and distance running work together in often magical symbiosis, in ways ranging from the financial to the psychological, from the biochemical to the existential. "You don't die suddenly from cancer, as you might from a heart attack, and you don't survive it overnight, either," says Richard Pestell, M.D., director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at the Jefferson Hospitals in Philadelphia and a former national-class distance runner in his native Australia. "Marathon training also unfolds over a period of months, and the race itself takes hours to finish. The passage of time permits a narrative to take shape. When the story of cancer meets a runner's story, the combination can be quite powerful."

The story continues today, in the rain, two weeks before the marathon, with a gray dawn bleeding over Portland.WE SET OUT JUST AS THE contours of the downtown buildings become visible across the river. My teammates settle to the esplanade with a light step. Along with completing last week's 20-miler, their last significant hurdle before the marathon itself, most have achieved their fund-raising minimum of $1,600. The donations typically arrive in modest increments--nationwide, the average TNT donation is around $75--through events such as poker parties and benefit nights at restaurants, and by direct pitches via e-mail, blogs, and other social-network sites. TNT maintains a firm policy toward fund-raising. If a participant fails to reach her goal by a deadline a few weeks before her marathon or other event, her credit card is charged the difference between what she's raised and the target amount.

TNT and similar cancer-charity running programs require hours of weekly effort beyond the time spent on the road. It is, in a word, a commitment. Runners endure the dogged scut work and toenail-losing, ITB-twanging pain of marathon training while scrambling to hit fund-raising goals. They press family and friends for cash in the midst of a dismal economy. According to Audrey Sheppard, director of the TNT program in Portland, well over half of the area's marathon participants are nonrunners before entering the program, and the same percentage are new to fund-raising. Still, over the weeks, I've heard little kvetching. The burden of fund-raising only adds to the martyrdom effect.

"Just offering [a quality] training program with certified coaches who customize regimens for participants would be reason enough to join," says Sheppard. "But combine that training with the mission of funding lifesaving cancer research, and you wind up with highly motivated people who work hard and get their friends and family to support them. Taking on a physical challenge of a marathon is tough, but knowing you're doing it to help beat cancer makes the pain more manageable."

Setting out along the esplanade, I fall in beside Cassandra Mercer, a first-time marathoner who works for a victims' rights organization. Like most runners on our team, Cassi, 39, maintains a TNT-designed blog that chronicles her training and fund-raising progress, and features a link for making donations. She has helped host a poker party and other events, but has raised the bulk of her money by directly soliciting family and friends.

"It blows people away when I tell them that I'm running 26.2 miles," Cassi says. "If I were doing something that was conventionally thought of as fun, like playing in a beach volleyball tournament, I don't think they'd be as generous." With a smile, she adds, "Maybe sometimes I emphasize the pain a little."

The era of cancer-charity running began in 1980, when 22-year-old Terry Fox, with part of one leg lost to osteogenic sarcoma, ran more than halfway across Canada during his Marathon of Hope before the disease returned and killed him. That feat spawned the Terry Fox Foundation, which, through its worldwide community of running events, has contributed upward of $500 million to cancer research and become one of Canada's most visible sources of funding for the disease. The United States soon followed, with a vengeance. Today, Team in Training, the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life, and the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure spearhead what has grown into a cancer/running juggernaut.

In 2010, America's 30 largest athletic-event fund-raisers--which include cycling and walking events in addition to running races--generated a total of $1.68 billion, according to the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council. And a trio of cancer programs claimed three of the top four places on the list. Relay for Life, a 24-hour group walk/run held in 5,000 communities internationally that accounts for more than a third of the American Cancer Society's annual budget, topped the rankings. Race for the Cure, the massively popular 5-K run/walk series with 1.6 million participants, finished in second place. TNT, which raises about half of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society annual budget, came in fourth. Those programs contributed the bulk of the more than $650 million raised annually by runners for cancer causes. The charities benefiting from runners' efforts have come to rely on the sport for their mission and survival. As David Hessekiel, president of the Run Walk Ride council, says, "When TNT sneezes, LLS risks catching pneumonia."

THE RAIN HAS EASED A NOTCH, with an ethereal mist rising in its wake. I watch a sculling shell cut silently over the river, and a pair of geese take wing. A flock of competitive runners blasts toward me along the lower level of the Steel Bridge, their legs flowing and heads still, moving like a squadron of samurai. Annie and Dawn are running ahead of me, and I push to catch up with them.

In April 2008, nine days before she was to leave on a trip to Italy to finish her bachelor's degree in interior design, Dawn discovered a lump at the base of her neck, near her clavicle. A biopsy revealed that she had stage 2 Hodgkin's lymphoma. A mass of malignant tissue filled more than one third of her chest cavity. In her blog chronicling her cancer experience, Dawn described the tumor as "a crescent moon around the top of my heart."

Some blood cancers such as Dawn's originate in the lymph nodes, the disease-fighting network contained throughout the body. Abnormal cells grow and accumulate. Eventually, tumors develop and, due to a compromised immune system, infections go unchecked. Left untreated, tumors can spread everywhere. Because its exact cause is unknown, a blood cancer seems to be an expression of cells gone rogue, attacking from the inside, incomprehensible and, most frightening, beyond our control.

"When you have cancer, it feels like some alien force is attacking you," Dawn says as we move along. "You don't have any control over it. Then you go into chemo and you have even less control. During radiation, it feels like you're getting cooked from the inside. It's just this weird, awful feeling." She goes quiet for a few strides, her face darkening with the memory. Then brightening, Dawn says, "But running gives you back control. You feel yourself getting stronger day by day and week by week--especially when you're in the kind of structured program TNT offers. It's like running is the opposite of cancer."

Interestingly, the rookie marathoner's feelings are echoed by one of the greats at the distance. At age 60, Bill Rodgers, four-time Boston Marathon winner, was preparing to run Boston in 2007 when a routine physical revealed he had an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Rodgers underwent a radical prostatectomy, followed by radiation therapy. Cancer-free, he returned to the Boston Marathon in 2009, finishing the race in 4:02.

"Being a cancer patient is just a whole different deal," Rodgers says. "You feel it in your bones and skin--it eats away at your mind. Life seemed clear before, but suddenly there's this question mark in front of you. Cancer is this amorphous thing. It works on a cellular level that you can perceive intellectually, but that you can't see. Running, by contrast, is all about focus and structure. Once I got cancer, I appreciated running on a whole new level. I had always thought of it as fun, a game, a toy, but now I realized we could use it as a weapon, too. Use it in our own minds and bodies, as a fund-raiser, and for unity."

Indeed, cancer has cut a wide swath among the sport's icons. Besides Rodgers, Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic gold medalist in the marathon, has survived a bout with skin cancer. Fred Lebow, cofounder and longtime organizer of the New York City Marathon, died from brain cancer in 1994. And in April, Grete Waitz, Lebow's close friend and the nine-time winner of his race, succumbed to an undisclosed cancer at age 57. Just as a road race offers the citizen-athlete the chance to compete in the same arena as an Olympian, cancer is also pitilessly egalitarian. No matter when we cross the finish line, we share the same pain.

Pain, in turn, lies at the heart of the martyrdom effect, which forms the behavioral foundation for cancer-charity running--and for cancer-charity giving. Christopher Olivola, Ph.D., a behavioral economist at the University of Warwick Business School in the U.K., has extensively studied the phenomenon. Olivola explains that common sense dictates that when making a charitable contribution, people prefer giving through a process that's pleasant and enjoyable rather difficult and painful. "But our research shows that, in some cases, people do the opposite.

They contribute more to a cause if the fund-raising process entails pain and effort--either for themselves or for a friend--than if it is pleasant and easy." Furthermore, Olivola's research shows that if you're running a road race for charity, your difficult effort will draw more donations if you're running against something painful, such as cancer, than if you're running for something pleasurable, such as an orchestra or a museum.

"That's why, from a fund-raising perspective, the combination of the marathon and cancer works so well," Olivola says. "The pain of the marathoner is more congruent with the suffering of a cancer patient."NOW, IN THE AUTUMN MIST, we're running across Northwest 23rd Street, where nonsuffering Portlanders are rolling into cafes for brunch. Dawn runs with a loose, easy stride, while Annie, a nonrunner before entering the program, moves less fluidly. The miles pass in the blur of conversation. Dawn speculates that had she received her diagnosis a few decades earlier, it would likely have formed a death sentence. But Hodgkin's lymphoma now stands as one of the most curable forms of cancer, with the five-year survival rate increasing from 40 percent in the 1960s to more than 80 percent today. This advance is largely due to "combination chemotherapy," a mixture of toxic chemo drugs blended to mitigate their most damaging side effects.

"The assumption was always that I would get better, but that it wasn't going to be easy," Dawn says, and then gives a sour smile. "That turned out to be an understatement."

The core of Dawn's treatment consisted of a six-month-long period of biweekly chemotherapy sessions that sapped her energy, forced her to miss weeks of work, and provoked bruises, skin infections, and debilitating bouts of nausea. She suffered an especially intense allergic reaction to the drug bleomycin that damaged both lungs. After she completed the chemotherapy regimen in the fall of 2008, Dawn began a cycle of radiation therapy that proved even more taxing.

In order to cure her, Dawn's oncologist had to poison her, employing therapies, paradoxically, that were born as weapons. The seeds of chemotherapy were planted during World War I, when scientists discovered that the mustard gas killing thousands of soldiers in the trenches could lower white-blood-cell counts. By similar accident, at the end of World War II, scientists learned that radiation from the atomic bombs dropped on Japan erased victims' bone marrow, which led to advances in radiation therapy.

In the 1950s, the federal government assumed primary responsibility for funding cancer research in the United States, investing heavily in chemotherapy, which, despite its side effects, formed a revolutionary breakthrough. By the late 1960s, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the former fearsome killer of kids, was rendered a largely curable disease, as was Hodgkin's lymphoma. Over the last 40 years, federally funded agencies have spent more than $100 billion on cancer research. In 2010, the National Cancer Institute's overall appropriations were $5 billion, more than twice the amount allotted for research of cardiovascular disease. Still, a comprehensive cancer cure has proved maddeningly elusive. Adjusted for population growth, the overall death rate for cancer has dropped only nine percent in 40 years. The death rate for cardiovascular disease, by contrast, has declined 69 percent over that same period.

"Cancer is harder than heart disease," says Pestell, the director of the Kimmel Cancer Center. "It's harder than just about anything. To a certain degree, rather than finding a cure for cancer, we've just learned a whole lot more about what's killing us."

Indeed, much in the way of other conflicts, the war on cancer has bogged down in recent years. Controversy flares, for instance, over conflicting messages about screening for prostate cancer and breast cancer, two prevalent forms of the disease. A growing number of critics argue that instead of endlessly pouring treasure into seeking a cure for cancer, resources should be shifted toward reducing the environmental hazards that cause it. Meanwhile, NCI funding flattened through the previous decade, "the longest sustained period of flat federal funding for cancer research," according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Currently, only about nine percent of grant applications to the institute receive funding on the first try. As a consequence, researchers avoid cutting-edge projects in favor of more conservative proposals that are more likely to win bureaucratic approval, but less likely to yield clinical applications that save lives.

The turgid publicly funded campaign has left an opening for private, nonprofit organizations such as the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and the Komen Foundation. Focused on a single type of cancer, these groups can advocate more aggressively than the NCI and can fund cutting-edge, treatment-based research. They increasingly supply the energy, passion, and leadership lacking on the federally funded level.

"Support from groups like the Komen Foundation lets us focus on out-of-the-box-type research," explains Pestell. "For example, Komen is helping finance a study we're doing on the plasticity of cancer cells. If you can have spontaneous malignant growth, we're asking, why can't you find a way to promote spontaneous remission? Komen encourages us to pursue this provocative kind of question. And when you're talking about Komen, of course, you're really talking about the Race for the Cure."

The Komen Foundation, for its part, aggressively markets itself as the patron of such treatment-based research. On its Web site, the organization claims to have "touched every major breast-cancer breakthrough of the last 29 years." The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society takes an equally bold marketing approach, pointing to the support it provided in the development of Gleevec, a breakthrough leukemia drug, and its championing of "translational research," which drives a drug's passage from lab to clinical use.

The success of the major running-reliant nonprofits has been closely studied by the cancer community, with a resultant legion of imitators. The major foundations supporting treatment and research of brain cancer and lung cancer sponsor 5-K fundraisers. Of the 120-plus cancer-related nonprofit organizations listed on the Web site Charity Navigator, 64--or 53 percent--feature run/walk events or programs. This, in turn, has led to a phenomenon known in the industry as "5-K clutter"--an over-supply of charity road races.

To gain a lift above the clutter, the Colon Cancer Alliance struck upon a marketing ploy that plays upon the nature of the disease, titling its race the Undy 5000, and awarding souvenir boxer shorts instead of the usual T-shirts. The tactic worked; while the average maiden 5-K draws a field of around 250, the first Undy 5000 in Philadelphia, in 2008, drew 500 runners, and subsequent editions of the race in Phoenix, Dallas, and St. Louis have topped 1,000.

"You're not one of the big boys in the cancer community if you don't have a 5-K," says Andrea Clay, national fund-raising director for the Colon Cancer Alliance. "At some point you would think that the cancer-charity 5-K market would be saturated. But if you do your work and promote your event, the demand is still rising."BY THE SPRING OF '09, the mass in Dawn Viar's chest had dissolved, and her disease was in remission. She embarked on her postponed trip to Italy and returned to work at a Portland architectural firm. Less than one year after her diagnosis, finally, Dawn signed up with TNT for the Portland Marathon training program. Although the idea of raising money for research into her own type of disease appealed to her, it wasn't her primary motivation. "It was mostly personal," she says. "I had never competed in track or a road race, but I had been running since high school--three or four miles, four or five days a week--and I missed it. I discussed it with my oncologist, and he was all for it. I thought I'd just do a half-marathon, but then I thought if I was going to go through all that effort, why not do the full marathon?"

For a few minutes we move quietly, absorbed in our own thoughts. Finally, looking up, Dawn, Annie, and I spot the campus of Oregon Health & Science Knight Cancer Institute, gleaming on a hill overlooking downtown. It houses the laboratory of Brian Druker, M.D., the renowned researcher (and avocational marathoner) who brought the wonder drug Gleevec to market.

Gleevec, the brand name for a chemical that treats chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), a lethal type of cancer that represents 15 to 20 percent of adult leukemia in Western populations, was approved by the FDA in 2001. Dr. Druker and his colleagues developed Gleevec through "rational drug design," an approach involving the signaling pathways within cancer cells. Specifically, Druker sought a chemical that would shut off a certain type of enzyme that was known to drive the excessive growth of leukemia cells and cause cancer.

The problem was, he couldn't convince the National Cancer Institute to finance his iconoclastic search. Eventually, his work drew the attention of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, which was seeking just this kind of venturesome research--and which had recently adopted TNT as its primary fund-raising arm. The LLS funded 30 percent of Dr. Druker's investigations, which soon hit pay dirt. Clinical trials proved that treating CML with Gleevec resulted in complete remission in 90 percent of cases. Moreover, as Druker hoped, the drug's targeted approach produced minimal side effects. After a decade on the market, the drug has earned $4.3 billion in sales, and has also proved effective in treating seven other forms of cancer. In 2001, Gleevec was featured on the cover of Time magazine, hailed as a one of a few "bullets" in cancer research.

"The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society recognized the opportunity with Gleevec," Dr. Druker says. "They were willing to take a chance on our work. Unfortunately, researchers today are basically in the same position as we were in a decade ago. If anything, it's even more difficult for novel research to gain federal funding. We're more reliant than ever on private nonprofits like LLS, which means in effect that we're more reliant than ever on Team in Training."

A tall, taut man with blue fighter-pilot eyes and a gentle manner, Dr. Druker personifies another alchemy involving cancer and the sport: the fact that so many oncologists are also impassioned runners. Matt Smith, M.D., for instance, the medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, who treated Bill Rodgers's prostate cancer, is a veteran of 10 marathons, with a 3:09 PR. John Wagner, M.D., a medical oncologist at the Kimmel Cancer Center, over-trained to the point that he required hip surgery. Druker, for his part, has run four marathons, including two with a TNT group. In 2003, at age 48, he recorded a 3:12 PR at the Chicago Marathon.

"I associate marathon training with rivers," Dr. Druker says.

"I've trained for them along the Thames in London, along the Seine in Paris--wherever work takes me. I love the simplicity of running, and the time it gives me to think. I can troubleshoot a problem and come back an hour later with a solution."

Dr. Druker also witnesses running's value in the lives of his patients, who include a man in his 40s who recently logged a 2:50 marathon and a woman in her 70s who completed a triathlon. "With cancer, control has been stripped away," Druker says, echoing Dawn Viar. "But by running, and especially by training for a marathon, you can get it back. You can accomplish a goal that only one percent of Americans have achieved. But running works on an even deeper level. There is something peculiar to running that revives one's spirit."

DAWN, ANNIE, AND I WORK ALONG the waterfront through the industrial flats of the Pearl District, and then climb toward Forest Park. Kevin Tangen's pickup appears at the end of the block. Besides providing logistical support, Kevin, a 48-year-old engineer, trains with us, and will also run the Portland Marathon. During a long run earlier in the season, Kevin had told me his cancer story.

Seven years ago, just after he turned 40, he had felt a lump on his scrotum that turned out to be testicular cancer. After surgery and chemo, his doctor said he was cured, but the tumor returned. This cycle was repeated five times. Each round of chemo left him increasingly exhausted. His young daughter would sit on his lap, pull out fistfuls of his hair, and laugh. Finally, after the fifth round of treatment, the tumors didn't come back. Kevin's energy slowly returned, and with it an irresistible urge.

"I had always been physically active," he says. "I fished, I played softball, and I coached my kids' sports team, but I had never run. Now, suddenly, I felt this need to get stronger for the trials to come; somehow I sensed running was the way. For a few years, I ran on my own. And then I sensed that it was time to reconnect with other people and share the strength I'd found. About that time a flyer came in the mail from TNT. It seemed like fate. So I signed up. I ran one marathon, and then another, and here I am."

Now, during a water break, Kevin and I compare late-marathon psychological approaches.

"What I do on occasion," he confides, "the last few miles of a tough one, is park myself behind the best-shaped butt I can find, and follow it on in."

I laugh and tell him that I sometimes fantasize on similar themes during my tough miles.

"I'm an engineer," he says. "My imagination isn't that good."

Dawn had departed the aid station a few minutes earlier, so I resume my run with Annie. She signed up for TNT knowing almost nothing about cancer or distance running, but looking for a way to get fit and to contribute. She's a quintessential representative of the new running boom: female (nationwide, 75 percent of TNT participants are women) and unconcerned with time. "I still can't believe I'm doing this!" she shouts as we climb into the park. "I ran 20 miles last week!"

For the next few minutes, as we climb along the Leif Erikson Trail, Annie goes quiet. I assume that she's hurting as much as I am. In fact she's deep in thought.

"Becoming a runner has let me understand cancer better," she finally says as we hit the turnaround and begin our descent. "If you have cancer, if someone you love has it, even if you're just a grunt like me--it's all a long march. It's not going to be over in a day. During the toughest miles, you find out you're all alone, but at the same time, you feel incredibly connected. You learn that you're capable of doing things you never could have imagined."

She pauses to exchange high-fives with a flock of teammates heading up the hill. "Maybe we're really these strong, wise, competent, wonderful beings," Annie says, reflecting after the runners have passed. "But that idea is kind of scary, so most of the time we just don't try. The marathon makes you try. Maybe, in its way, cancer makes you try, too."PREVALE ALE TASTES as rich and hoppy as Tam Driscoll had promised. The ale is pouring, a blues band is wailing, and the kids are running around with balloon hats on their heads and paint on their faces. A week has passed since our run in the rain. Now it's the evening of the TNT benefit at the Laurelwood, a brewpub in Northeast Portland. Tam is in full fund-raising glory, working the tables and the bar, buttonholing her friends and neighbors and coworkers, even the staff at the restaurant. There's no saying no to Tam.

In 2008, she raised $32,000 for TNT, making her one of the top fund-raisers in the nation. In 2009, she bettered her previous mark, pulling in $58,000. Since her first campaign with TNT in 2001, Tam, a 47-year-old communications manager for the city or Gresham, Oregon, has run five marathons and nine half-marathons and raised $160,000.

"In 2001, I got a flyer in the mail from TNT just after I had my first child," Tam says. It's about an hour into the party, and she has joined me at a table off the bar. "I did some research and learned that more kids died from blood cancers than any other form of the disease. As a new mother, I found that unacceptable. So I signed up."

Her involvement took a cruel twist in 2003 when Nancy, one of her six sisters, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Nancy seemed to have had it beat: She'd been cancer-free for five years when, with a black velocity, the disease returned early in 2009. She died that June.

"I was angry, and then I got fired up," Tam tells me. "I lost my sister to a disease that I know can be cured--or if not cured, at least we can develop treatments that will allow people with cancer to live life to the fullest. I'd be more skeptical if we didn't have the scientific proof right here under our noses in Portland with the work of Dr. Druker. Years ago, CML was a death sentence. Now, with Gleevec, people with the disease are living normal lives."

The daughter of a teammate stops by to tell Tam that she's sold a bunch of Prevale Ale lapel pins at $1 a pop. As Tam talks to the girl, it occurs to me that this is why we're doing this. In another week our team will huddle in the predawn darkness at the Portland Marathon. There will be one final shout of "Go Team!" and then all of us--including Dawn, Annie, and Kevin--will move to the starting line, and all of us will finish (Tam will successfully run the Nike Women's Half-Marathon in San Francisco two weeks later).

On this bright September evening, this glad gathering of music and food and friends seems just about the best we can manage. It seems to embody the unity that Bill Rodgers was talking about; like the running that has delivered us here, the night seems cancer's opposite.

"We want to do something good," Tam says after the girl leaves the table. "We want to do something for our grief. We want to do something to remember. Running gives us a way." Tam's eyes brighten and fill. She doesn't try to hide her tears, nor does she let them silence her. "I stand at the starting line of a marathon," she says, "I look at all those purple shirts, and I marvel at the sea of people wanting to do good."

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